We see everyday what’s possible with social networks for improving customer engagement and experiences? Can the same be done with internal social networks for improving employee engagement and experiences?

In the many years of helping businesses align business objectives with social and new media strategies, there is one thing that always introduces difficulty into the equation, employee engagement. At some point in the development of any strategy, employee and stakeholder input is critical to ensure relevance and ultimately success. While social media may more often than not live in the marketing department, it affects the entire organization and as such, requires a centralized approach to leadership and management combined with a distributed platform for communication and learning.

Enterprise social networks (ESNs) are on the rise as they can deliver an immediate solution for aligning stakeholders around activity streams with the familiarity of Twitter or Facebook. These internal social networks are not only validating and useful to power users, but also friendly and easy to participate in for those who are new to the platform. While the promise of ESNs is significant to the future of how employees interact, learn, and ultimately work, challenges exist around adoption and overall measurement. And, like social media in general, businesses often underestimate or altogether miss the true potential of social networks and the role they play in bringing people together to do something incredible…over and over.

Charlene Li, my colleague at Altimeter Group, published a new report, “Making The Business Case For Enterprise Social Networking” to do just that, help you make the business case for enterprise social networking. As she observes from the onset, “ESNs are not simply Facebook behind a firewall. Every enterprise has distinct needs and nuances that require a reframing of a social network.”

So often, businesses deploy new technology without designing goals, processes, and reward systems to promote new engagement. Additionally, decision makers miss the need to empower key stakeholders to drive adoption and address internal skeptics and detractors. Thus, the potential for ESNs is restricted right out of the gate and in the absence of leadership and executive sponsorship, internal networking strategies miss critical opportunities to engage and inspire people, internally and externally, to more effectively connect and collaborate.

Everything begins with investing in a culture of employee and customer-centricity where ESNs and social networks in general become enablers for a new vision, empowerment, supported by defined outcomes and rewards. Yes, it’s part technology. But, tools only take you so far. It’s the philosophy and eventually vision and leadership behind the implementation that serves as the foundation for internal engagement.

Four Key Ways ESNs Deliver Value to a Social Business

In Charlene’s report, she found that many companies place greater emphasis on technology and not the people or the relationship factor that ESNs are designed to nurture.

Most companies approach enterprise social networks as a technology deployment and fail to understand that the new relationships created by enterprise social networks are the source for value creation. Yesteryear, internal technology departments could force software on business units, but in today’s consumerized world, business units can adopt enterprise software, often without IT ever knowing. As a result, a new approach is required that focuses on four key ways that relationships create value through enterprise social networks:

These four points serve as beacons for guiding the development of a more meaningful engagement strategy within and across work groups to set the stage for a social business. If we bring a “Facebook-like” (get it?) mentality into our ESN strategy, we may fall short of enabling a truly social enterprise. In the report, she introduces the six elements that outline the differences between a public and enterprise social network to clarify the nuances between what’s truly possible.

What we have here is a failure to communicate

In general, expectations are high for ESNs because of the wonderful opportunities introduced through public-facing social networks. Executives are learning about the benefits associated with customer engagement through Facebook, Twitter, et al. But without establishing initial goals and then driving toward those outcomes, expectations for ESNs often go unmet.

Charlene’s research team interviewed 185 end users and surveyed 81 decision makers to learn about expectations for ESNs. They found that not only is there strong belief i the ability for ESNs to provide value to the organization, there is an emphasis on improving collaboration and the flow of information and knowledge within the organization.

However, Charlene uncovered “an undercurrent of concern” around potential value creation and the sustainable adoption of ESNs. Notably, most organizations saw one or more of the following four scenarios:

1. An initial enthusiasm and usage followed by slow decline.
2. Only one department strongly adopts the ESN.
3. Culture confusion and lack of executive engagement stymied growth from the start.
4. Lack of social business maturity.

Looking at the chart above, the majority of organizations are still in the experimental phases of ESN deployments. They’re piloting without operating under a formalized strategy. Examining the other numbers however, the distribution between formalized, mature, and advanced is notable. But as Charlene notes, there are three critical painpoints that are either limiting success or hindering adoption. And, one could then revisit these numbers to discover that organizations may not be as far along as they believe.

Developing an Action Plan

Regardless of where you are on the maturity curve, there should be four essential elements of your ESN action plan:
1) Objectives;
2) Metrics;
3) Relationships; and
4) Technology.

To get started, use the following checklist to help organize and prioritize your effort

Taking a Step Back: You are the Change Agent

There is no “I” in team, but there certainly is a “me.” And, to that point, there is also a “me” in social media. I guess, there’s an “I” too, but my point is that at the center of every team you belong to, is well, you. You are already learning about the importance of social media in your personal life. Many of you who are reading this now have also invested in demonstrating the importance of social media to your organization. But there’s a stark difference between traditional networking applications that most likely exist at your company today and the social networks you depend on for everyday communication, discovery, and engagement.

When you joined the organization you’re at today, you most likely received a desk, a PC, a phone, an email account, etc. You probably didn’t receive a Twitter handle or a Facebook page. You brought those into company. But that’s not all that came along with you. You introduced a new perspective on how transparent communication and connections facilitate engagement and collaboration. And this is why existing infrastructures that facilitate employee interaction and knowledge sharing are often not up to par to meet the needs for those pushing for transformation in the social economy.

Social media is about you. You have a voice. Everything you see in social networks is unique to you because you are at the center of the entire experience. This is why I lovingly refer to social media as the Egosystem. By design, everything revolves around you. Your friends, co-workers, the businesses and organizations you support, are linked to by you. You have become the ringmaster of your personal connectivity and in many ways, serve as the IT department not only for yourself, but also the people who rely upon you to ease their way into the egosystem. You know better than anyone what it takes to engage you and also inspire you to take action. You need to get something out of it. You need to see what happens as a result.

It comes down to you to demonstrate what’s possible because in the end, you know that employee engagement influences customer engagement.

As Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh recently shared with me, “If employees weren’t happy, they would not make customers happy. If customers weren’t happy, we wouldn’t be where we are today. We believe that if we get the culture right, then most of the other stuff, like delivering great service, or building a long-term enduring brand will just happen naturally on its own.”

I think the only two vendors who got enterprise social networking right are Bitrix24 and Mango. If you want your employees to use ESN, they must come jam packed with worktools that are used on a daily basis.